The Career Development Core seeks to increase in size, diversity, and multidisciplinary representation the pool of qualified scientists actively engaged in cancer communication research. Under the direction of Ross Brownson, PhD and Edwin Fisher, PhD, we will do this by providing skills training, mentored research experiences, and special funding opportunities to doctoral students and early career scientists from a wide range of disciplines. There are three components to this Core: (1) career development in cancer communication for junior faculty; (2) training in cancer communication for African American doctoral students; and, (3) a cancer communication seed grant program. Specifically, the career development component will provide a 2-year mentored career development program in cancer communication for one junior faculty awardee per year whose research experience or interests are relevant to cancer communication. This program includes mentoring from a senior CECCR investigator, salary support for career development research on a CECCR Study, participation in a new career development seminar and other established research colloquia, conference attendance and access to special funding opportunities for pilot research in cancer communication. Secondly, the training component will provide 2-year traineeships in cancer communication research as a tool for understanding and eliminating race-based disparities in cancer to one African American doctoral student per year. This traineeship expands upon our national model program, Eliminating Health Disparities (EHD), a graduate traineeship for African American students in public health. Lastly, the seed grant program will award up to 2 seed grants per year to early career investigators to support the development of independent cancer communication research to be conducted through and with the CECCR. This will stimulate interdisciplinary research collaboration and help promising cancer communication research germinate. As a result of these activities, in each year of the project we will increase by at least two the number of new cancer communication research proposals submitted to national funding agencies, the number of cancer communication papers published in high impact peer-reviewed journals and the number of cancer communication papers presented at national scientific meetings by CECCR career development awardees, doctoral trainees, or seed grant awardees.